Chittoor (D)

<p>This past two years has witnessed farmers across India demonstrating for their livelihoods: a hike in milk procurement prices has featured as a key demand. Their demand reflects a grave crisis underway

The Tribunal had restrained the authorities in Andhra Pradesh from proceeding further in establishing the cricket stadium at the foothills of Tirupati
The National Green Tribunal (NGT), Southern Bench, on Tuesday, pulled up the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB) for stating that it had no role in establishing an international cricket stadium at the foothills of Tirupati.

Seshachalam hills, home to a variety of plants and animals, reptiles and amphibians, have proved again to be rich in biodiversity, with the recent sighting of a rare poisonous spider after a gap of 113 years in India at the foothills of Tirumala.
The spider belonging to the genus poecilotheria is known to be native to India and Sri Lanka, of which eight species are found in India and seven in Sri Lanka. While taking inventory of the Seshachalam Biosphere reserve spread across Chittoor and Kadapa districts of Andhra Pradesh, officials of the Seshachalam Biodiversity Lab attached to Tirupati Wildlife Management Circle sighted a dead specimen of Theraphosid spider, a variety listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as ‘critically endangered.’

Hyderabad: Monsoon-dependent groundwater levels in the state have fallen by more than 11 metres in 2012. In 1988, the fall was a mere five metres and in 1998, it fell by seven metres.
Interestingly all this happened despite normal average rainfall in the past two decades. Sharing the aforementioned with this newspaper, Dr K. Venugopal, joint director of the AP Ground-water Department said that what is more alarming is that perennial resource of groundwater in the state is not only declining but has started drying up.

In what is being seen as a disturbing trend, studies have revealed that the drinking and groundwater in Chittoor district is polluted with high concentrations of uranium, 135 times more than the safe limit